COVID-19 & The Retail Gaming Electronics Industry
COVID-19 changed the world, impacting and catalyzing permanent changes in the retail industry. The pandemic made the concept of stability in retail rare for a period of time. While many sectors of retail saw a concerning decline in sales, other sectors saw no decline or tremendous growth. With the general public stuck at home in 2020, consumer demand for gaming electronics surged. Many popular gaming consoles sold out like hotcakes at major consumer electronics stores and big box retailers nationwide.
Releasing a Highly Anticipated Gaming Console in Challenging Times
The brand needed to deliver a successful product launch to meet the intense consumer demand for gaming products and brand expectations. Unstable supply chain and manufacturing challenges threatened the success of the national product launch. Yet even with these risk factors, the brand remained fully committed to seeing through the product launch. A large part of the launch success hinged on partnering with the handful of reliable suppliers and service providers that were fully operational during the pandemic.
The Challenge
The Creative Vision
To market their new gaming console, the brand needed a display design featuring a modern, future forward brand image. The gaming console was a highly anticipated and highly marketed product, and its branding needed to align with the high expectations surrounding it. The brand entrusted their preferred fabricator partner with a complex display program that would echo a futuristic brand image for the gaming console across 14,000+ illuminated merchandising display sets nationwide. The fabricator chose to further enhance this aesthetic and boost the value of the displays by incorporating custom white hued LED backlighting and downlighting in the design.
Finding the Right Lighting Supplier in COVID-19 Times
Because the display program would require an assortment of illuminated display combinations (such as end caps and inline displays of all shapes and sizes), the fabricator needed a LED lighting supplier that could do more than simply ship cookie cutter lights. Given the tremendous project scope, getting the display materials, including the lighting components, shipped in time for the aggressive drop deadline was not easy with so many manufacturers shutting down during this time. The entire industry was struggling worldwide, making it a challenge to get the displays completed.
Fortunately, LEDCONN’s unique customization, project management capabilities, and nimble supply chain network proved to be the perfect fit for this complex program. LEDCONN’s pre-existing China facilities were functioning well in 2020, so the lighting supplier partnered with the fabricator from prototyping through logistics to meet the program’s drop deadline. To ensure lighting quality, a single full display prototype took place late 2019 to early 2020. LEDCONN’s rapid prototyping capabilities helped further accelerate the retailer approval process for the fabricator.
The Solution
Customization: The Key to Brand Integrity
Upon receiving approval, the LEDCONN team worked closely with the fabricator to determine the most appropriate lighting strategy for this display program. Because a specific branded look needed to be achieved, LEDCONN engineering recommended a lighting strategy that would achieve the branding intention. This strategy included an array of lighting products including LEDCONN’s LUXFLEX™, LUXFIT™, and LUXLINEAR™ lighting products.
The fabricator specifically requested LUXFLEX LED flexible sheets be screwed into the backlit fabric lightbox areas of the displays. Due to the project’s complexity and specificity, LEDCONN recommended engineering a custom version of LUXFLEX to cater to the fabricator’s specific sizing, brightness, and polarity requirements. Each specified product size was retooled to accommodate the fabricator’s needs. The additional step of custom tooling also freed up the fabricator from having to cut the thousands of LUXFLEX sheets used on their own.
LUXFIT, found behind the product headers, and LUXLINEAR were also used and customized for size and brightness for each display. LEDCONN specifically recommended the LUXLINEAR magnetic series for easier installation and removal.
Complex Logistics Solved, One Container at a Time
Besides the challenge of brand accuracy, getting the lights delivered on time in the COVID era also proved challenging. To meet a tight drop date, LEDCONN’s supply chain team consolidated multiple lighting kits for various display designs into bulk ocean container shipments, picked up at a single location instead of at multiple factory locations. The majority of the ocean containers were scheduled as multiple shipments and released based on priority with the most time sensitive releases shipped via air.
The Final Result: Sold Out Products!
Between September – October 2020, over 14,000+ fully customized, illuminated displays featuring unique brightness, color, and product configurations hit US store shelves within a month’s time. The illuminated displays successfully achieved the brand’s product branding expectations, resulting in an incredible customer experience that matched the hype around the gaming product launch. Even though COVID-19 lockdowns and supply chain shortages could have negatively impacted the launch success, the popular gaming console continues to sell out every time the product hits display shelves nationwide through 2022.
Looking to wow your customers with your next illuminated retail project? Contact our team of lighting gurus at sales@ledconn.com or give us a call at (714) 256-2111. We’re here to help in any way we can!
